The New River: An environmental success story

The infamous smell that Perez’s grandmother and generations of border residents experienced came from high concentrations of pesticides and raw sewage passing under the port of entry.

And then there was the foam.

“There would be these huge foam episodes,” said John McCaull, a lawyer working with the citizen activist group Calexico New River Committee. “You couldn’t even see the river it was so full of foam from phosphates. The Border Patrol was very concerned about issues with the crossing site and the health of people (migrants) crossing in the river,” he added.

McCaull found no legal means to attack river pollution at its origin. “We can’t go after polluters in Mexico under U.S. law, under the Clean Water Act, if we don’t know who they are,” McCaull said. “And the New River is a collection of pollution from so many different sources.”

Meanwhile the water’s smell and increased salinity began to foul the burgeoning wildlife at the Salton Sea; a population consisting less of fish and fowl than weekend partiers from Hollywood and Las Vegas who cavorted beside its desert shores until the mid-1960s on waterskis.

Things got worse before they got better.

Meager efforts to study and improve water quality in the New River as per the 1944 Water Treaty with Mexico were overwhelmed by increasing industrial development in Mexicali that exploded in the 1970s. Mexicali grew from 64,500 in 1950 to 510,000 in 1980, for instance. Today nearly 700,000 people live there, dwarfing its sister city Calexico which had a mere 6,500 residents in 1950, growing slowly to 14,400 in 1980 and only 39,300 today.

Pollution flowed into the river uncontrolled through the 1990s, especially after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened the way for even more manufacturing along the border where environmental regulation was lax.

Calexico residents revealed skin rashes, nausea, asthma in both adults and children, dizziness, eye irritations, persistent headaches and chronic coughing. Residents inured to both the occasional environmental justice activist and living with doors and windows closed said they seldom invited guests home for meals because the smell from the river would taint the ambiance of any social gathering. They doubted fair winds would ever blow through their yards, confessing to CNRC members they feared toxic airborne dust even more than water contact.

“We treat it as a waterway, as a river here in the U.S., Mexico treats it as a drain,” said Miguel Figueroa, former executive director of the Calexico New River Committee. “Even if Mexico were to perform all the remediation and improvement projects on their side, to the standards of the state of California, it would still be an impaired waterway.”

While some might consider the river’s isolated location as reason to put other environmental disasters ahead in line for clean up, Angel agreed with Calexico residents who felt the New River had waited long enough.

“People should care about the New River because I believe all citizens in California deserve to have their rivers clean. If this river were running through San Francisco or through the heart of LA in the condition that it used to run before it would have been cleaned up many decades ago,” Angel said. “All our citizens are entitled to a fair amount of environmental justice.”